‘King Football’

Abstract

While the advent of war had adversely affected the close of the 1914 football season, the game’s organisers approached the 1915 season with few qualms. It was expected that the war, while an obvious inconvenience, would not significantly harm the status quo of the game and that it would continue unhindered. But, as this chapter shows, once Australia’s participation at Gallipoli became widely known and once losses began to accrue, football clubs began to feel the pinch, and against mounting criticism tried to find an appropriate level of patriotism that would assuage critics and allow the game to continue and not be curtailed as its opponents wanted.